Sao Joao Del Rei U20

The academy side plays its football in the Campeonato Mineiro Sub-20, and the results have been modest: group-stage exits rather than finals, and a 4-0 defeat to Atlético Mineiro's under-20 side in 2024. No youth title has come the club's way in the past decade.

The side draws its players and its name from Athletic Club, formed in São João del-Rei in 1909 as Atlético Futebol Clube before the change to Athletic Club four years later. The senior team wears black and white and answers to Esquadrão de Aço, and its own recent form has run well ahead of the youth side's: a run to the final of the Campeonato Brasileiro Série C in 2024, where it finished runner-up, sits alongside a Recopa Mineira and back-to-back Campeonato Mineiro do Interior titles.

Home matches are played at Arena Sicredi, formally the Estádio Joaquim Portugal, where capacity has grown to 4,655 after work carried out in 2024. The ground closed for further renovation in 2025, forcing the club to play away from home for a stretch. That August, a new training centre, the CT Magno dos Santos, opened in nearby Santa Cruz de Minas on the site of a former hotel, three kilometres from the stadium, shared by the professional squad and the academy.

Of those who have passed through that academy, the defender Gabriel Índio is the name attached to it: he moved up into the first team and was later sold to Napoli in Italy.